What Happened to Number One Contender Matches?

Hope your all doing well. This is Cross giving you a blog on number one contender matches.

First off, I am not talking mainly about the world championships but the mid-card titles (ic, us, tag team, divas). Now when Jack Swagger faced Zach Ryder for the United States Championship, he didn't do anything to deserve the match. It was just thrown together. I thought Swagger should of atleast beat Zach Ryder like the week before but no.

I remember in the past where there would be legitimate Number One Contender Matches. Now in order to get a mid-card title match you either have to 1. Be a rival of the champ (regardless of win/loose streak) and/or beat the champion one on one (or two on two cause of tag team). These type of matches were better for building up feuds between the champion and the contender. Besides, it takes away credeibility of a champion sometimes when there beat by a random superstar and that superstar then gets a title match. I believe these cases of pinning a champ to earn a title shot should be rare due to it not making the champion look easy to beat.

Plus you have to see the same match over and over again due to rematch clauses without winning number one contender matches. Like this year Airboom defeated Micheal and Otunga one week, beat them the next week for the titles, and reatained there titles next week in a rematch clause. No build up, no legitimate or credible rivarly. Just a speed up process to get the titles off of David Otunga and Micheal Mguilicutty. I kind of understand why they did it, but it made the tag team division seem to get weaker. So theres a reason we need number one contender matches to actually help build up rivarlies.

Now back to 2009. There were plenty of number one contender matches for the Intercontinental Title. I believe all of those were won by Dolph Ziggler. It actually made sense how he got the title shot cause he won a big match-up instead of loosing 3 weeks in a row, getting mad at the champion, and then getting a title shot. I know he never won the IC Title at that point, but it just all made sense.
Other Examples:
Straight Edge Society winning a Fatal-4 Way No1 Contender's Tag Team Match ( 2010)
An actual tournament to see who would win the Intercontinental Championship (CM Punk won) but it made the IC Title look very prestigious due to who was in the tournament and how hard it was to get the title (2008)
William Regal won a battle royal to see who would face Santino for the Intercontinental Championship(2008) Again the title looked prestigious due to the match type to be able to face the champion.

Those are just some of many examples of number one contender mathes which helps build up a feud, gives legitimate or credible reasons to face the champion (I do not always mind if there is a good history between superstars to just challenge the champion but they should be on some win streak to earn it), it will make the title more prestigious, you won't have to see more of the same match, and it does not look like WWE is trying to rush things to get a title match on some ppv.

Thanks for reading guys it means alot. Comment below and point me in the right direction of becoming a better wrestling blogger. I will accept hate, love, not sure, etc. comments. This is Cross saying remember the Cross and who died on it.

You're right man, it seems wrestlers are just given title shots when it's convenient for the show or ppv, but that way we can't connect with the match because we've been given no reason to care. No. 1 contender matches should happen for every title match, not just when WWE can't think of a decent storyline.